


screaming chicago.

by dylaesthetics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Break Up, F/M, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, Implied Sexual Content, Insecurity, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Mystery, Post-6B, Post-Break Up, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Stydia, Undercover Mission, adult! stydia, supernatural detectives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29706120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dylaesthetics/pseuds/dylaesthetics
Summary: Lydia sighed, “I hate Chicago.”“Why?”“Don't you?”Stiles looked at her in confusion, “Why would I hate Chicago?”“Because you almost died here.”He forced a chuckle, “I almost die everywhere we go.”“Not like that.”“Why do you hate Chicago?” Stiles repeated. Lydia felt his gaze on the back of her head but she didn’t move.“Because I saw it happen.”_____Eleven years after Scott was bitten, the pack and their allies continue to fight against Monroe and her growing community of supernatural hunters - roaming the country and freeing the innocent during the operation 'anchor'. Lydia and Stiles face the consequences of their recent breakup as they return to the place of Lydia's nightmares to save their friends.
Relationships: Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 7
Kudos: 37





	screaming chicago.

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: blood, violence, sharp items, mentions of guns

_#2 corey_

_#3 ethan_

_#5 lydia_

_#6 malia_

_#8 theo_

_#9 liam_

_#11 scott_

_#14 isaac_

_#15 kira_

_#24 stiles_

_#26 cora_

_#33 derek_

_#37 jackson_

_#62 mason_

  
  
  


“Run!”

So Lydia did, her fingers interlaced with his. Once again they were running from danger, which followed every step of their lives from the day their sixteenth birthdays’ candles died out from a blow.

Every time she ran, Lydia thought it would be her last. Every scream that lingered in her throat, every breath in sync with Stiles’, she imagined as her final.

Yet she never stopped. Not until an arrow whistled through the air into his skin with a thud and the boy running beside her fell to the ground, lifeless.

She screamed.

* * *

**PROPERTY OF #5-24**

north carolina; 2019.3.19 // day 1322 of operation _anchor_

**casualties:** 4

**escapes:** 12

no disturbances in TENNESSEE [#11-15], NEW MEXICO [#26-33] and WISCONSIN [#3-37]. the location of #6-14 remains unknown, last seen in CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, on 2018.10.29. #5-24 report bodies of 2 john does and 1 jane doe in an s-n-c in NORTH CAROLINA. #2-9-62 report the body of #8 in OHIO, may he rest well.

  
  


“I thought I made it clear that you quit writing in that old thing.”

Lydia didn’t have to look up to know Stiles had returned from what he liked to call his grocery run - stealing supplies from the basements of local houses. Lydia, of course, never condoned it, but she hated an empty stomach more. She was well aware that she and Stiles were two of the most wanted culprits among Monroe’s men; a _real_ trip to a grocery store would be almost suicidal.

Lydia struggled to close the journal - over the years so many sheets of papers had been glued to the original pages that its height matched its width. She slipped it under her pillow, away from the droplets of rain squeezing through the holes of the cave’s ceiling. Lydia straightened up against the cave’s wall, crossing her arms - a quirk she’d grown accustomed to whenever Stiles disturbed her peace and quiet.

“I got you something,” said Stiles, pulling out a dusty bottle of red wine from his backpack.

“Why?”

Stiles winced at the annoyance so apparent in her tone, “It’s March nineteenth if I’m correct. You’re twenty-seven today.”

“So what?”

“People usually celebrate birthdays,” Stiles shrugged, unscrewing the cork with the tip of his knife. “Remember the one where you were possessed by Peter and poisoned us all with wolfsbane?”

Lydia didn’t laugh.

“We’ve been on the run for five years, Mischief. Birthdays aren’t exactly our priority.”

Once again, Stiles pulled a face.

“You’re perfectly okay to call me Stiles, there’s no one out here who could hear us,” he uttered, crouching over his mattress to pass the wine to Lydia after chugging a mouthful himself. Lydia accepted it but didn’t move the head of the bottle to her lips.

“Instead of celebrating my birthday, we should drink to Theo,” argued Lydia, glancing at the smart-watch around her wrist that only hours ago had sent the update of their friend’s loss. Finally, she took a long sip of the bittersweet drink and passed it back to Stiles.

“I never liked the guy,” admitted Stiles, looking fixedly at Lydia, who didn’t return the gesture. “I sure as hell am not going to pretend I did now.”

Lydia flinched. “Theo’s been on our side for the past eight years. He gained our trust. Liam, Mason and Corey wouldn’t have made it this far without him. He carried something with him that kept the others going. _He_ should be celebrated and remembered like any one of us.”

“He hurt you.”

Lydia sucked her teeth, “You’ve hurt me too. Worse, perhaps.”

That silenced Stiles once and for all. His lips formed into a thin line as if to stop himself from shouting at her in response. When he spoke next, however, his voice lacked even the slightest hint of frustration, “The difference is I hate myself for it but he never even apologised to you.”

“I don’t want apologies,” said Lydia determinately. “I want everyone to be alive.” She changed the last bit from ‘safe’. None of them had been safe for eleven years - since the night Scott was bitten.

In silence, Lydia and Stiles passed the bottle from one to the other until its contents were drained til the last drop. With her head buzzing quite enough to sway in the air if she were to stand, Lydia shifted her gaze from the damp ceiling of the cave they’d occupied for the past two weeks to their scattered belongings - clothes, medicine, food leftovers, books and weapons. Running from one state to another and hiding in the strangest of places had long become a reality members of their operation had accustomed to. What once had started as a promise to keep the supernatural kind safe from Monroe and her followers at the end of high school was still in motion eight years later. For Lydia and Stiles, their new life had started five years ago, only weeks after their college graduation, for they have wanted to hold onto at least one of the dreams that now grew a coat of dust in the darkest of corners.

These days, Lydia and Stiles never even complained, too occupied with escape missions, dreamless nights and stakeouts passed in their four-months-long silence. Four months. Well past Halloween, Lydia had called off their nine-year-relationship.

Too lost in thoughts, Lydia hadn’t even noticed the fire crackling at the foot of their mattresses. When Stiles - poking the wooden planks with a crooked stick - caught her gaze, he shifted uncomfortably.

“Lydia, I’ve been thinking about returning to Chicago,” said Stiles hastily, darting a glance back at her.

She flinched, “Not a chance.”

There wasn’t a hint of surprise in Stiles’ expression when he spoke next, “We need to find Malia and Isaac. They _need_ us.”

“We are _not_ leaving North Carolina until Monroe’s people stop locking up our kind. That is final,” ordered Lydia, raising her voice. For a moment, the sound echoed from around the cave.

“Malia and Isaac could be dying.”

“It's been five months, Mischief,” pronounced Lydia. “We don’t even know if they’re in Chicago or if they’re still alive. What we _do_ know is that there is a supernatural camp two miles South with enough prisoners for an army.”

This, however, caught Stiles off guard. He dropped his stick into the evolving fire and scowled, “You’re joking. Lydia, you want to turn these poor people into our puppets?”

Lydia tilted her head, her arms crossed so tightly together now that it sent a jolt of pain to her tensed muscles, “We're fighting for them. Shouldn't they fight for us too?”

Despite her confident tone, a wave of guilt flushed over her - these people didn’t owe them anything, not really. Stiles seemed to agree with the voice in Lydia’s head too.

“What is _wrong_ with you? We’re doing this for them, not us. Monroe will forever be our fault,” cried Stiles, losing his temper at last. “Ever since Chicago, you've seemed to have forgotten it. You haven't been yourself.”

Almost, _almost,_ Lydia opened her mouth to explain. Tell him everything. Tell him why. Tell him that not a single thing she’d said to him four months ago was the truth. Instead, Lydia uttered, “I'm tired. I'm going to bed.”

Stiles didn’t protest; he knew better than that. As Lydia lay on her rain-dampened mattress with her blanket covering the ear her pillow didn’t, she listened to the muffled crackling and Stiles humming what sounded like a lullaby, drifting into a light sleep.

Instead of the usual nothing or occasional nightmare, a memory entered Lydia’s dream.

> _For several nights Lydia lay awake, snuggled up to Stiles’ side, praying for his fever to have gone down by the following morning and listening in on his grunting each time he moved. It had been two weeks since one of Monroe’s archers had shot Stiles in the back with their finest arrow, one Lydia struggled to remove as she drowned in tears over his body, which she’d laid over the backseat of their truck and watched over in the dim salon light. She hadn’t slept since; each time her eyelids shut, she’d picture Stiles’ frozen chest as she pressed down hard and put her mouth on his, her hair tickling his cooling skin. Even though Stiles was well and alive beside her now, she’d never forget the ache in her chest when he’d stopped breathing for a good minute in the suburbs of Chicago._
> 
> _Because of that feeling, Lydia had come to a decision she’d never expected to consider in the first place. She couldn’t lose Stiles - not when she loved him enough for an eternity or two._
> 
> _“I have to tell you something,” said Lydia, four weeks after the Chicago incident._
> 
> _She’d waited until Stiles no longer bled through his bandages and some colour returned to his cheeks. Just the other day Lydia had driven them to a warmer patch in the woods somewhere near the Canadian border and made camp. As winter approached with full force, she feared how far up North they had come but they hadn’t a choice - Stiles couldn’t handle a drive longer than a couple of hours. They had to wait. Lydia’s other matter, however, couldn’t._
> 
> _“Okay,” Stiles drawled out, adjusting his blanket in front of the fire Lydia had kept crackling for the entire day. “I knew this was coming.”_
> 
> _Lydia eyed him nervously from across the pile of the burning wood, where she sat with her legs crossed on the ground, a good distance away, in case Stiles would react badly to what she was about to reveal. To which he most certainly would._
> 
> _Stiles half-smiled, “You've had that look on your face that says something's bothering you. You've had it for a while now. I know you, Lyds.”_
> 
> _Lydia sulked, “Well, that doesn't make this any easier.”_
> 
> _Stiles’ smile changed into a frown, “What is it? Is something wrong in Beacon Hills? Bad news? Have the others found Malia and Isaac?”_
> 
> _“No, it's about us.”_
> 
> _“What's wrong with us?” asked Stiles. When Lydia turned her head down, he thought he’d figured her out. “Oh, I know it sucks but ever since I got shot I can't really… Well, you know. And once I've healed completely I'll be back in the business-”_
> 
> _“I don't love you anymore.”_
> 
> _As soon as she let those words depart from her mouth, her insides filled with regret. It wasn’t true. She loved him, perhaps more than she’d ever before. But it had to end - for her sanity._
> 
> _Stiles stared at her, open-mouthed, for what could have been hours. Every once in a while, his mouth shut, as if he was trying to repress something._
> 
> _“Is there, uh, someone else?” asked Stiles, his voice fragile._
> 
> _“No, how could there be? I just…” said Lydia, repressing the urge to cover her mouth in shame. “I just don't feel the same way about you that I did when we were in high school, or college or when we first joined the operation. The feeling’s gone.”_
> 
> _Silence surrounded them again. Silence, except for the excruciatingly loud fire. Stiles had let go of the tight hold of his blanket; it now laid by his feet, almost catching fire._
> 
> _“So you want us to- To break up?”_
> 
> _“It would be for the best,” Lydia croaked out, her gaze fixed on the dancing light. “But don't worry about the operation, we can still continue, the two of us, after all we make a good tea-”_
> 
> _“I'm not worried about the operation,” Stiles cut her off coldly. “I really don't care about it at all at the moment.”_
> 
> _Lydia watched as Stiles picked some blades of grass and threw into the fire._
> 
> _“Okay. Talk to me then,” Lydia breathed out._
> 
> _She didn’t have to wait long this time._
> 
> _“How long have you felt this way?”_
> 
> _Lydia pressed her lips together, “Too long. Way too long. Months.” The ease in which she lied terrified her._
> 
> _Stiles scoffed in disbelief, straightening up, “So when you kissed me this morning and last night and the day before and every single day for the past I don't even know how many months, you didn't love me?”_
> 
> _“Correct,” Lydia forced out._
> 
> _“When, in that time, you said you loved me, you didn't?”_
> 
> _Lydia nodded hesitantly._
> 
> _“On the night I got shot and you told me all these things when I woke up, about…” Stiles paused, catching his heaving breath. “You didn't mean them?”_
> 
> _“No.”_
> 
> _With every lie, Lydia’s insides turned more into coal. She couldn't bear the sight of Stiles, his hands connected tightly enough to break his knuckles, his eyes shifting in and out of focus as he watched Lydia over the cloud of smoke, his lips formed into a line so thin she wouldn't even know they were there if not for the fact that she'd kissed them a thousand times before._
> 
> _Stiles waited until his breathing slowed to speak next, “Well, then you, Lydia, are the most terrible person I've ever met. You're cruel. You're evil. You…”_
> 
> _He said every word with force; he didn't believe them, not really. A part of Lydia wished he could learn how to - to let go of her easier. None of it was going to be easy, however._
> 
> _“You toyed with me, knowing perfectly well just how much I love you,” Stiles concluded, pressing his lips back together to restrain from something again._
> 
> _Lydia flinched. She’d hoped that the last time she’d heard the three words was as Stiles’ goodnight the night before, as they fell asleep with intertwined hands - they’d feared the noises creeping within the woods. Not like this. Not with a wavering fury._
> 
> _“This has been the hardest thing I've ever had to do,” Lydia told the truth for the first time that night. “I don't take it lightly. I didn't say anything for so long because you're too important to me.”_
> 
> _“Get out.”_
> 
> _Lydia’s body froze, “What?”_
> 
> _“Leave, Lydia. Go join whichever other team,” said Stiles in an oddly calm voice. She would’ve preferred if he’d shouted. His glistening eyes were too much._
> 
> _Lydia shuddered, regaining control of her muscles. She stared at him in silence, her lips trembling. Stiles avoided her gaze, shifting in his seat uncomfortably; he didn’t have to say it out loud for Lydia to know he was in pain, whether from the pierced hole in his skin or her own words. She waited for him to return his gaze - even if it didn’t linger on her for longer than half a second - to speak, “You don't mean that. We can't just… We can't just stop being friends. We have always been friends first, Sti-”_
> 
> _“I am never going to stop loving you if you’re around,” said Stiles coolly. “So you should go. Kira says she's been lonely with just Scott. Join them.”_
> 
> _“But I don't want to leave you.”_
> 
> _Stiles swallowed hard, “Then you shouldn't have pretended to love me.”_
> 
> _Lydia’s insides felt as though the sharpest blade had cut through them relentlessly; what was worse - lying to him about a matter as such or him believing her lies-, she couldn’t tell._
> 
> _“We can make this work,” uttered Lydia. “Just let me stay. I'm willing to follow any rule.”_
> 
> _He didn’t speak then. In the starless dark, without any ticking clock in sight, Lydia wondered how long he’d kept his quiet, poking the fire with the tip of a skewer and watching the wood transform into a pile of ash._
> 
> _“Stiles?” called Lydia cautiously, much later._
> 
> _Without looking up, he whispered, “Fine.”_
> 
> _A weight lifted from her shoulders, but she dared not to exhale in relief just yet, “I can stay?”_
> 
> _“Yes.”_
> 
> _“What do I have to do?”_
> 
> _“Just two things.”_
> 
> _“What?”_
> 
> _“Leave me alone for a few hours.”_
> 
> _“And then?”_
> 
> _“And then you come back and we forget.”_
> 
> _The stab of the blade hit her particularly hard now, squeezing out whatever hope remained in her blood._
> 
> _“Is that all?” she squeaked out._
> 
> _Stiles nodded slowly, putting the skewer aside._
> 
> _“I don't want anything else from you.”_
> 
> _Darkness enclosed her as she walked and walked, but only so far that she could still spot the fire as small as an ant through the trees. She found their truck, hidden in between bushes only a few hundred yards from the forest road she’d driven up and down the other day, searching for the perfect spot. Lydia entered the car from the driver’s door, positioning her hands on the wheel as if she’d been crossing a particularly long highway and grown tired from her clutch. She leaned back in the seat, shutting her eyes, even though it mattered little - the darkness encircled her entirely._
> 
> _She didn’t know how much time passed as she tried to ignore the presence of Stiles around her, from the armholder he’d pick at nervously, expanding a hole in the leather with wool sticking out, to the distinctive scent of his cologne, which he had no reason for wearing but he did as an old habit. How was she supposed to forget?_
> 
> _Well into the night, when Lydia returned to their camp with their spare tent tied around her waist, charcoal churned, glowing red at the slightest breeze. The tent that had belonged to the two of them up until tonight was zipped from the inside. On top of their plastic containers lay a mattress messily cut in half and her set of blankets. She set up the tent as silently as it allowed her, stepping in only when she was certain the snores coming from Stiles’ tent weren’t faked._
> 
> _As she lay on the ruined mattress with her eyes fixed on the tent’s ceiling, Lydia noticed her half was a couple of inches wider than his._

* * *

No matter how little progress Lydia and Stiles made in the matter of North Carolina’s supernatural camp - or as they indisputably liked to refer to as prison -, Lydia continued rejecting the suggestion Stiles had raised - returning to Chicago to search for any trace of Isaac and Malia.

Lydia, although only sticking to her reason of ‘too much work yet to be accomplished here’ out-loud, protested during every Stiles’ attempt to convince her. Yes, she wanted her two friends found, preferably safe and sound. Yes, another team could take over in North Carolina. Yes, her _real_ reason for fighting Stiles couldn’t be spoken aloud because it broke the rules of their breakup pact. The whole truth was that Lydia dreaded Chicago because of what had happened to Stiles the last time they set foot there.

About a week after their first argument, Lydia noticed a difference in Stiles’ behaviour. One night she heard his half of the mattress lift up and his blanket getting pushed aside before he tiptoed outside the cave. For what reason, she didn’t know. In the mornings, Stiles would choke his breakfast down in a flash, excusing himself from the cave once again. Without enough time to ponder, Lydia failed to understand what he’d been hiding from her until she returned to their cave from an especially exhausting stakeout and met five pairs of eyes she hadn’t seen in months.

In the moment of utter surprise, Lydia didn’t question their presence - she threw her arms around Kira’s neck before moving on to Scott. As she stood before Liam, Mason and Corey, she held back her tears - their group looked incomplete without Theo. She hugged each of the boys longer.

In the midst of their hellos and sorrys, Lydia eyed Stiles - far from the action - lying on his stomach across his mattress with a book, stuck on the same page for way longer than necessary. She’d scold him later.

“The plan’s simple,” said Scott when the six of them sat around the fire. “Kira and I join you and Stiles in Chicago and wherever their traces will lead us, while the puppies remain here as lookouts for the camp.”

Liam winced at the nickname but didn’t say a word.

As Scott disclosed their plan further in detail, no longer making it sound so simple, Lydia sat with her lips forming a thin line; Stiles had found a loophole in her excuse, one she’d feared he eventually would. By replacing themselves with Liam, Mason and Corey, he left her no choice but to return to Chicago with him, Kira and Scott. The four of them would pack up and set off at first light.

“What’s up with that mattress? His snoring’s that loud?” asked Kira, wincing at the rough cut Stiles had failed to fix in the past five months.

Lydia chuckled but her eyes filled with fright; between everything that had happened in Chicago and now, she had forgotten to let the others know they had broken up, as had Stiles, based on how swiftly he turned his back to them, continuing to pretend to read.

“A word?” Lydia’s plea sounded more like an order as she approached him with crossed arms. The others had fallen in a deep discussion and didn’t notice them. Stiles nodded warily, throwing his book down and following her outside the hole in the cave, down the slippery path into a clearing. They stopped at a chuckling river that would certainly drown out if there were to be any raise in their voices. Lydia turned to Stiles with an opened mouth.

“Before you say anything, remember the rule,” he warned, tilting his head. He looked almost bored, lazily darting his glance from their surroundings to Lydia and back.

Lydia bit on her lip, “Forget the rule for the length of one conversation.”

“No, I am not talking to you about this,” urged Stiles, sulking.

“You’re an adult,” reminded Lydia, rolling her eyes. “We’re doing this the adult way - going back in and just saying it, loud and clear.”

Stiles took an offence - he crossed his arms and pouted. Lydia watched as he stumbled down to the river, reaching down for some washed up stones and throwing them in one after one, trying to make them bounce off the surface. He’d pulled a typical Stiles - avoiding confrontation until he couldn’t anymore. Instead of nudging him, Lydia approached him, crouching down beside him.

Stiles exhaled loudly, throwing in a final stone before descending on the grass.

“With Theo dead, Malia and Isaac still missing, and how unsuccessful we’ve been at finding new prisons recently, they don’t want to hear any more bad news,” said Stiles quietly.

Lydia raised an eyebrow, “What are you saying?”

He hesitated, staring at his feet sinking in the mud.

“I’m saying, let’s not tell them anything for now.”

“What the _hell_?” Lydia’s voice raised as she looked at him wide-eyed. “What in the world are you implying?”

“We pretend we’re still together. It shouldn’t be that hard, just…” he trailed off, either embarrassed or clueless. “Just act normal. They couldn’t tell the difference when we got together in the first place anyway.”

Lydia’s heartbeat rose; this was the first time either of them had addressed it without any side-tracking in five months. For a moment, she was speechless, studying every expression on his face she could tell apart in the dark. Then she recovered.

“No, I’m going back in and-”

“Imagine you do,” Stiles cut her off. “Then what? Let the others try and come up with some way to change the teams when everyone’s settled in with theirs? Scott lectures me at every mile on our way to Chicago and Kira beats you up in her own way... We can’t have any distractions right now, not when Malia and Isaac’s lives are still on the line. Not when we’re leaving in the morning.”

To her disappointment, Stiles was right. 

“It’s not ideal. But it’s for the best,” he added, his voice trembling only a little.

Something about his proposition unsettled her as much as it incited her. Here Lydia was, sitting three feet from the boy she still loved and broke up with for something as selfish as weakness, introduced to the possibility that, for a while, they could pretend to be whoever they lost on the November night in the woods. ‘Bad idea’, a voice in her head said. She shrugged it off.

“Fine,” Lydia gave in.

“Rules?”

“Don’t kiss me and we’re good,” said Lydia quickly, avoiding his eyes.

Stiles scoffed, “As if.”

“Well, you’re the one who said you could never stop lovin-” 

Stiles sent her a warning glare and she stopped abruptly; she’d gone too far. Lydia cleared her throat.

“Either way, this is your fault. I never asked you to invite the others or plan that trip,” she said coolly.

“Yep, you were perfectly happy with neglecting Malia and Isaac’s lives like you do everything else.”

With that, Stiles rushed up and back inside the cave, leaving Lydia speechless in the rattling of the river.

“Unbelievable,” Lydia uttered under her breath before making her way back to the others herself.

For the rest of the night, Lydia and Stiles didn’t utter a word.

* * *

At first light, like planned, they stuffed all their necessary belongings into Scott and Kira’s truck, leaving little room to stretch their legs in the backseat. Lydia and Stiles barely spoke, if so, to apologise for accidentally elbowing the other or complain about their safety precautions. The drive to Chicago would have been long nevertheless, but crossing the smaller, emptier counties to avoid dangerous eyes ensured they would reach their destination by nightfall at best.

At a gas station in the suburbs of some Kentucky town, with Scott and Stiles disappeared in its let-down bathroom, Kira finally addressed what Lydia had feared she would, turning to face her.

“What’s with the silence from the backseat?”

There laid the opportunity - Lydia could tell her once and for all. Get rid of this uncomfortable situation; Lydia and Stiles were as bad as pretending to be normal as she was pretending to have fallen out of love with him. She almost confessed when Stiles’ words from the night before crept into her thoughts. She settled for “We’re arguing.”

“You always are,” noted Kira.

Lydia shook her head, eyeing the bathroom door every once in a while to prepare for the boys’ return, “Not like that. That’s just banter. We’re _seriously_ arguing now.”

“What about?”

“Uh, he didn’t tell me about this whole Chicago plan,” said Lydia quickly. She wasn’t lying but the entire truth hadn’t been revealed either.

“Is that why you two disappeared last night?” asked Kira in realisation. “I told Scott that you've been acting strange - not that I should've, he can probably smell it on you - but he said there is nothing that would ever come between you. You just fit. You know, he’s already planning your wedding as Stiles’ best man after all this is over.”

To Lydia’s delight, the creaking of a door notified them of Scott and Stiles’ return. As Stiles hopped in the seat beside her, he seemed chirpier. When Kira started the engine and turned up at the road leading back into the woods, Stiles emptied a variety of snacks from the pockets of his coat.

“Want some?” he offered, flashing a pack of sour candy. “Got your favourite.”

For what could’ve been the first time in months, Lydia smiled at him genuinely, accepting the neon-coloured pack, “Thanks.”

“The cashier inside was clueless. I just put more and more in my pockets and she didn’t even bat an eye,” Stiles whistled, stuffing pieces of his own favourite flavour into his mouth. He glanced at her, grinning, “Reminds me of that guy in Colorado last year, the one who left the whole shop to get the key to the bathroom, remember?”

Lydia remembered it perfectly. From the thrill of their recent luck, the couple had even dared to book a motel room to lose themselves in the neatness of a hot shower and a mattress on a real bed, each of which they enjoyed together. Stiles’ eyes darkened momentarily, remembering the same thing. Happiness. Something that had been stolen from them the night that arrow hit his spine.

For the following few hours, Lydia and Stiles chattered, occasionally pointing at something exciting on the side of the road and throwing pieces of candy into each other’s mouths, missing half the time. Lydia’s heart sank when Stiles moved to the driver’s seat at the border sign of Indiana. Instead of chatting to Kira, Lydia decided to nap until it was her turn to drive, falling under the spell of the sunset.

When Lydia woke up next, utterly disoriented in the sudden dark, Stiles had just parked the truck on the side of the round, surrounded by an all-too-familiar forest. Rain poured heavily down the car’s windows. Kira rustled beside her, kicking a bag of crisps in confusion; she’d woken the same. When Lydia’s eyes had adjusted, she read a rust-coated sign on the wooden gate of a black-fenced territory, saying, ‘The Old Cemetery (pre-1850). Property of Chicago City, the state of Illinois’. They had arrived.

“This is where they were caught,” said Scott quietly, motioning to the road in front of them. “I was lying against the fence, too injured to move. One second I saw Malia and Isaac winning the fight but then I heard Lydia scream and turned away for just a moment, trying to locate her and Stiles. When I looked back, they’d disappeared. I heard tires squeal through the scream.”

All at the same time, the four friends voiced their regrets. 

“I never should’ve trusted Frank,” Kira uttered.

“I should’ve known it was a trap,” said Stiles.

“I never should’ve entered that fight alone,” whispered Scott, shaking his head.

“I shouldn’t have screamed.”

The three of them turned to Lydia. She was biting hard on her lip, her eyes watering as she stared at the sign fixedly, recalling the first time she’d read it, many many full moons ago. This was the meeting spot for Malia, Isaac and the four occupants of the truck, assigned by what they’d imagined to be a trusted ally, who’d claimed to have found an underground supernatural prison around here. Instead, this was where they encountered a dozen of armed supernatural hunters.

“No!” Lydia exclaimed suddenly, noticed Stiles tighten his fingers around the door handle. He froze, glancing at her in confusion. 

She was back in October of last year, jumping at the chance to find a new camp. They'd been so reckless, so full of trust. Within a month, they'd freed hundreds of their kind across six locations. They'd even dared to mix three of the teams, something that had never turned out well before. They were on a good streak, possibly the best since the foundation of the operation - they didn't do as much as check for enemies. The moment Lydia and Stiles opened the doors to their truck and felt the late October breeze on their skin, they were about to suffer one of their greatest losses.

“It's just… Last time, we didn't check,” Lydia squeaked out, answering the stares of her friends. 

“Lydia’s right,” agreed Stiles, putting his hand back on the wheel. “Scott, window.”

“On it.”

Stiles drove around the cemetery as Scott hung his head out the open window, trying to catch any scent.

“It's all dead people,” said Scott, squinting as his nose wrinkled.

“Got anything on Isaac or Malia?” Kira asked without any certainty in her voice whatsoever.

“If only we had anything of theirs…” said Scott wistfully. “Those hunters just had to take _their_ truck of all our three.”

“They planned it. They were prepared. They knew everything,” uttered Lydia. Ever since, their licence plates had been replaced with the help of Stiles’ father and the outside of the trucks - repainted.

“It seems lifeless,” concluded Scott, putting his head back in and rolling the window up. “Except for those worms I hear munching on someone's flesh.”

“Thanks for the detailed image, mate,” said Stiles sarcastically.

They parked at the darkest corner of the street along the fence of the cemetery, flashlights and weapons ready. The warm streetlamp light reflected in the metal of Kira’s sword as she placed it over her shoulder instinctively, Scott practised setting his claws on and off, Stiles cocked the gun he'd been trained to use at his old FBI program and Lydia sneaked a pointed knife behind the belt of her jeans. She'd never yet pulled it out to injure anybody, depending on her murderous scream instead.

Together, they opened the creaky gate of the cemetery and sneaked in, almost floating above the wet grass - that's how silently they'd learnt to move. In some way, this reminded Lydia of the night they'd changed the Nogitsune, freeing Stiles of the demon. The four of them had stealthily walked inside the hallucination, holding onto a weapon or each other. The first time Lydia had held Stiles so tightly.

Now, Lydia watched as Stiles’ fingers gripped his flashlight, moving the spotty light over the poorly-maintained tombstones with half-erased names and dates. Some bore quotes in languages Lydia hadn't encountered.

Overall, nothing strange occurred on their stroll around the cemetery, nothing except for spotting a relatively new tombstone in the middle of the hundreds of graves, with nothing but a symbol neither of them recognised carved into the marble - a square with cut-out corners in the shape of an oval.

Lydia snapped a picture of it with the camera of her smart-watch, eager to discover its meaning later.

* * *

For the following two weeks, the four of them made more occasional trips to the cemetery, exploring its every corner in the dusk. Even though Scott couldn't catch the scent of Malia and Isaac-, Lydia, Kira and Stiles found it quite pleasing - at least they weren't buried here.

During the days, they questioned the people of this part of Chicago, each of the four sitting in a different corner of a bar in disguise. Had they seen or heard anything strange, the history of the cemetery and the forest that surrounded it. Most avoided any talk like so, rather poisoning themselves in a midday drink. But from a drunken man in his seventies, Stiles had learnt that he'd been fired as the groundskeeper of the cemetery a couple of years back. He blamed it on his age, but the pack thought otherwise. There was room to believe that the October night wasn't Monroe’s followers’ only visit.

Every day, Lydia continued to write down their progress in the journal she'd started when joining the operation. The ‘puppies’ had been more successful in North Carolina than Lydia and Stiles - they'd caused a disturbance that had freed a good few dozen supernaturals on their fifth day. Derek and Cora had rediscovered another ally - Braeden, who they'd lost contact with around three years before. Jackson and Ethan hadn't been in touch for a couple of days but they tended to avoid updates when things were quiet.

As for discovering the tombstone symbol’s meaning, their lack of resources failed Lydia.

The stormy weather didn't allow the pack to camp out. They took turns sleeping at the shabbiest of motels and the quietest of B&Bs - one night Scott and Kira would take a bed while Lydia and Stiles slept over the backseat of their truck, the next they'd switch up before moving on to a different property. No one looked at them twice, although a housekeeper had eyed the deep scar around Lydia’s neck suspiciously when she'd awakened them with a knock on the door one morning.

The sleeping arrangements weren't as uncomfortable as Lydia had expected. On the first night, Lydia and Stiles had volunteered to sleep in the truck. After Scott and Kira waved their anxious goodbyes by the first motel’s gate, Lydia drove them into a quieter corner of the woods, away from dangerous eyes. They packed up what they could to the front and sides of the truck, leaving little room for themselves.

“Is this fine?” asked Stiles, putting his beloved pillow under his head. They were lying down uncomfortably over the lowered seats, facing the roof of the car. So close, Lydia avoided moving even an inch, in case she'd accidentally fall on top of him. Their shoulders were lightly pressed together but they couldn't do much about it.

“Yeah, but I somewhat prefer the surface of the cave,” said Lydia. Stiles chuckled nervously, darting a glance at her. They hadn't been this close to each other, at the same eye level, since they'd woken up on the morning of their breakup day. Lydia had almost forgotten the speed of his chest moving up and down, the scent of his nighttime shirt, and his warm breath tingling the skin on her neck.

“Do you think we're going to find them?” asked Lydia minutes later, convinced that Stiles had yet to fall asleep.

“They have to be somewhere,” Stiles confirmed her suspicions, muttering under his breath. “It's a big city.”

Lydia sighed, “I hate Chicago.”

“Why?”

“Don't you?”

Stiles looked at her in confusion, “Why would I hate Chicago?”

“Because you almost died here.”

He forced a chuckle, “I almost die everywhere we go.”

“Not like that.”

Lydia turned to face her side of the truck, leaving more room between the pair. She forced her eyes shut, hoping her exhaustion would overtake her fear of falling asleep.

“Why do you hate Chicago?” Stiles repeated. Lydia felt his gaze on the back of her head but she didn’t move.

“Because I saw it happen.”

Picturing the memory in her head once again, she let her eyes flutter open. The encircling darkness didn’t help much. Sometimes she’d even remember the scene open-eyed in the just as suffocating daylight. It haunted her daydreams as well as nightmares.

“Is that why you didn't want to come?” asked Stiles, a longer silence later. Lydia pretended to have fallen asleep.

* * *

“Here you go,” said Stiles, dropping a heavy bag on the table of an empty bar Lydia had reckoned was safe enough. He’d left their motel room early in the morning, without a note. As much as Lydia trusted his judgment of their safety, she’d bitten her lip to blood worrying.

“What’s this?” she asked, moving away from Stiles’ soaking coat; the weather hadn’t improved.

“Take a look yourself.”

Lydia pushed the bag by its strap over the table as Stiles rid himself of the raindrop-covered overwear and rushed to the bar to order a cup of something scorching. Inside were five books, each bearing a cover of various symbols. Hastily, Lydia turned on her smart-watch and opened the picture of the tombstone, even though she’d memorized it long ago.

By the time Stiles returned with two - not one - glasses of mulled wine, Lydia had scrolled through a quarter of the first book on Celtic symbol meanings. She sipped from the glass blindly, her eyes rushing through the pages. Across the table, Stiles followed her example.

Hours passed as Lydia and Stiles searched, their gazes growing blurry from the thousands of symbols containing the pages. Updates from Scott and Kira occasionally lit up the screen of Lydia’s watch; two nights ago the pair had been picked up by Jackson and Ethan, who’d come across a camp only a couple of hundred miles from Chicago and required some extra pairs of hands. As things remained quiet on their side, the werewolf and kitsune agreed to leave Lydia and Stiles behind.

“At least we don’t have to pretend to be together anymore,” Stiles had uttered, minutes after Scott and Kira left that night.

In the month they’d spent in Chicago, the pretend-couple encountered various awkward situations, even outside Scott and Kira’s presence. On Lydia and Stiles’ first shift at the motel, they’d been served a room with a bed smaller than the queen-sized one in Lydia’s old room in Beacon Hills; in the worry of dangerous eyes, they’d forgotten to ask for single beds. That night, they shared a blanket, occasionally bumping into each other. When they woke the following morning with Stiles having snuggled to Lydia’s side while asleep, neither spoke.

Then there had been the comments. ‘A couple like you want separate beds?’ or Scott'strouble in paradise’ when Lydia and Stiles had been particularly unfriendly with each other. They would proceed to put on the act then. ‘I love her and all, but she gets on my nerves sometimes,’ Stiles would joke, avoiding Lydia’s eyes. Lydia would laugh with him, cursing the situation in her head and pushing away the ache in her chest - his words were the most hurtful of lies.

Since Scott and Kira’s departure, the tension between Lydia and Stiles had lifted. In fact, their current relationship reminded her a lot of their Junior year of high school - banter that quickly turned into flirting, sarcastic jokes and almost-dates in the corners of Beacon Hills. Except now they were ten years older and wiser, and more troubled thanks to their endured horrors - more than enough for a lifetime. And they were no longer in love with each other.

Lydia sighed, opening the final book by the title of _Symbols of Africa_ . It was divided into chapters, unlike the others, each belonging to a different country and their meta-ethnicities. Lydia searched through each, losing hope as she reached the second third of the book, chaptered _Ghana_.

“Want another drink?” asked Stiles.

All sound returned to her ears as Lydia escaped whatever spell the books had put on her and noticed the bar filling up. Everywhere she looked, various groups of middle-aged men drained their first shots or children held especially tight onto their parents, who Lydia judged silently for bringing them in the first place.

“We should go,” she urged, slightly nodding at a particularly suspicious individual taking the table beside them; he’d eyed the cover of Lydia’s book from beneath his beret. Silently, they packed up all the books except the one Lydia had been reading - she held a finger between the pages she’d left off at, hugging it to her chest. They sneaked towards the bar’s bathroom through the growing crowd, past a poster about an Easter celebration occurring that evening - all these people must’ve come for pre-drinks. Over someone’s shoulder, Lydia grabbed Stiles’ hand to avoid losing him.

Experience had taught them to only enter bars when their bathrooms had a window they could climb out of in case they’d been spotted. Most of the time they chose it as their exit anyway.

Upon entering the lady’s room, they ran into a woman and her little daughter, who tugged at her mum’s hand as she hopped around. Stiles glued himself to the tiled wall but the pair had already noticed him. The mother glanced between Lydia, Stiles and their connected hands.

“There are children here!” she screeched, pushing her daughter through the door. “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Lydia and Stiles waited until the door behind them clicked shut to let out a nervous laugh - only then their hands dropped. As Stiles checked the stalls, Lydia struggled to unhook the window clasp, covered in rust.

Two minutes later, Stiles was driving through the outskirts at ten miles over the speed limit with Lydia in the passenger seat. It no longer rained; they watched the sunset-coloured sky over the forest ahead of them until they spotted the rising full moon. Lydia hoped that wherever all the werewolves of the operation were, the moon added to their strength.

Given permission, Lydia turned on the salon light and reopened the book. Her eyes lazily drifted from something about the Akan people’s symbols to Stiles, who hummed along to a song that must’ve been playing at the bar; the radio had broken. He looked at peace, more alive than he had before they’d left for Chicago. A month without any disturbances had let his guard down a little.

Lydia flipped the page over, fixing on a symbol at the bottom of the yellowed paper.

“Pull over!” called Lydia, jumping up in her seat. Immediately, Stiles took the first turn left and stopped by the postbox of a suburban house.

“What is it?” anxiety crept into Stiles’ voice as his eyes shifted to her. Wide-eyed, Lydia revealed the opening to him.

There it was - a black square with its four oval-shaped cuttings. It had a name - Musuyidie. Translated from its original language, it meant ‘something to remove evil’.

“What have we got on Monroe?” cried Lydia, bursting with energy. “Her background information, anything? Where’s she from? Where’s she lived? Anything on Ghana?” Lydia rambled, scrolling back a few pages. Stiles leaned over the backseat to grab his laptop.

Upon the start of their operation, they’d researched every hunter whose name they’d caught. ‘Know your enemy’, Gerard had advised them once.

“Born in Peoria, _Illinois_ , actually. She grew up there before moving to Chicago for high school. Let me see,” uttered Stiles, his eyes darting across the screen. “Scott’s dad got all that stuff on her travels. There are visas for Europe, France mostly. Woah, she’s been to Australia! I haven’t even been farther than the Calavera’s club in Mexico...” Stiles trailed off.

“The point,” Lydia reminded, rolling her eyes.

“Right,” Stiles realised, shifting his attention back to the screen. In a moment, his eyes lit up. “Lydia! There it is. Right after high school, Monroe spent three months in Ghana. Reason for the destination - visiting relatives.”

In utter shock, Lydia leaned over to check for herself.

“Relatives,” she uttered, her head buzzing with ideas.

“She could’ve wanted to feel more connected to her roots. And four years spent in Chicago, she could’ve come across that cemetery…” Lydia’s eyes flickered from Stiles to the book. “Stiles, I think this is the one. The emotional connection to the place, the symbol that we haven’t seen at any other camp… ‘Something to remove evil’ - they consider all supernaturals evil, of course. What if this is their headquarters? Or a camp, possibly the biggest of them all?”

Stiles opened his mouth, wide-eyed, but before he could speak, Lydia thought of something else, “Stiles, what if… What if the tombstone’s the entrance? Maybe she stole the idea from the Hale vault… It could open and lead down, underground.”

They let the quiet surround them for a good minute. Lydia could hear the millions of ideas rushing through Stiles’ mind, as hers did the same.

“Lydia…” said Stiles slowly, losing his grip on the laptop. “Back in October, Frank told us the camp we’re looking for is underground. What if he wasn’t lying? He could’ve been captured, threatened. Kidnapped by the time we got to the cemetery.”

All at once, it came to Lydia.

“That sign by the cemetery, it said it closed down in the 1850s,” said Lydia, jumping up. “Scott! He smelled dead people. Fossils are scentless, aren’t they? He heard _worms_ eating flesh! The bodies would have to be fresh. The hunters could be burying the dead - ours or theirs - right there in the cemetery.”

Lydia and Stiles connected their eyes, speechless once again. In moments like these, they’d typically hug or kiss, out of relief. Both their eyelids twitched but neither moved an inch.

“That’s it,” said Stiles, breaking their eye contact and tossing the laptop over to the backseat. “We’re going back there right now.” He moved his hand to start the engine but Lydia stopped it.

“We can’t go in, just the two of us,” she said, holding his fingers firmly. “We’ll be dead by the time we get to the tombstone.”

“Nothing’s happened this far.”

“We don’t have claws or fangs that could rip a body apart! We’re just humans, Stiles,” noted Lydia, lowering her voice to a whisper.

“Humans who have survived this long,” Stiles pointed out, shuffling in his seat. He stared at her, long and hard, until the hair on her arms rose. “Lydia, we’ll do this like we’ve done everything else for the past ten years. Together. That’s how we make it out alive each time.”

With their hands intertwined over the stick shift and their eyes boring into each other’s, Lydia was thrown back to Senior year, the minute before Stiles was captured by the Wild Hunt and ripped out of her life. The first time he told her he loved her.

She turned her head down, shutting her eyes momentarily.

“Fine,” agreed Lydia. “But we’re not going anywhere until I’ve messaged everyone and I mean _everyone_.”

Stiles seemed satisfied with that, letting go of her hand at last. He waited, checking the bullets inside his gun, until Lydia sent a scripted warning to every team, as well as all their allies across the country, hoping they’d understand:

_SOS_

_#5-24: s-n-c or more, opens like $117 million, (?) #6-14 (?)_

“You ready?”

“If you are.”

* * *

Unlike the other times they’d driven up the hill to the cemetery, dozens of cars occupied the side of the road and people were squirming all over the forest grounds, carrying burning torches and innocent smiles.

“What’s this about?” asked Stiles, furrowing his eyebrows, his face illuminated by the fire.

“I saw a poster at the bar earlier,” remembered Lydia, watching the groups of laughing families and friends, without any clue whatsoever what horror lay underneath their feet. “Some kind of Easter gathering.”

“Guess there’s our cover.”

Stiles pulled up at the only free spot he could find, turning off the engine.

Everything about this was reckless. Without a plan, a set of razor-sharp teeth or knowledge of what they would discover, Lydia couldn’t imagine a resolution where they’d walk out alive. They could still turn around and leave, wait for the others. On the other hand, however, when had their plans ever worked out?

“If we die tonight…” started Lydia.

“We’re not dying,” Stiles cut her off sharply.

Lydia narrowed her eyes, “But in case we _do_ die, I have to tell you something.”

This could be her chance to tell Stiles the truth - erase the regret that had eaten her whole since the night he’d cut their mattress in half. Her last chance.

He eyed her curiously, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly. Finally, he said, “You can tell me after we’ve got our friends back.”

Lydia wanted to protest, she did - she almost screamed it out - but the door to the driver’s seat had already opened and slammed shut. She surrendered, leaving her coat in the car and following after him in the light of the flickering street lamps and torches.

No supernatural feeling captured her body, no scream lingered in her throat but she was certain they were walking into their death.

“Smile. Look normal, like you’re here for the celebration,” said Lydia, forcing a smile herself. They passed groups of teenagers, struggling to light their torches. If only a hell-hound were around...

When the pair reached the gate of the cemetery, a bored guard covered the entry, looking around for any intruders. On a whim, Stiles put his hand on Lydia’s shoulder and pushed her aside, in the cover of a leafless tree.

“Could he be one of Monroe’s?” worried Stiles.

Lydia sneaked a glance at the guard past the tree - he shouted at a kid for playing with a box of matches.

“I don’t think so.”

“How are we getting in there if the entry’s blocked?” Stiles motioned to the ten feet fence, unclimbable for someone with human strength only.

“We cause a scene.”

Having said that, Lydia scanned their surroundings. Some lit-up torches had been stuck in the ground, abandoned by their owners. A container of gasoline.

In a matter of minutes, the tree between them and the gate had caught on fire. Lydia and Stiles sneaked past the shouting guard, their heads turned down as Lydia unhooked the clasp on the gate, the usual creak drowned out by the panicked screams. Just as she was to push the gate open, Stiles pulled her back in an instant.

“What?” asked Lydia, looking around for any signs of someone having noticed them but everyone was looking in the same direction - the burning tree. Everyone except one.

A guy with a beret, the _same_ guy that had taken the table beside them earlier, stood by a tree a good hundred feet from the crowded scene, scanning the crowd with a pair of binoculars - nearing the spot where Lydia and Stiles stood frozen in fear, his arm still around her waist.

“Sorry,” whispered Stiles, staring at her - fear struck - while he pulled the hood of Lydia’s sweater over her head. The next thing she knew, he pressed her against the fence and his lips glued to hers.

Despite the surrounding shouts, despite the fire-caught tree, despite the fact that any second now they could get killed by a Monroe-trained hunter, Lydia didn’t pretend - she kissed him back.

At first, all air seemed to have been sucked out of her lungs. Her eyes fluttered half-open and she saw Stiles’ face, illuminated by the dancing fire, from a distance she hadn’t in so long she’d forgotten how his nose smushed against hers - aching to get as close to her as possible. Then her eyes were shut and her arms - locked around his neck, pushing him even closer.

Lydia was supposed to be the lookout, her back against the fence, facing the hunter, but her vision was blurred by the taste of his lips _finally_ back on hers. Stiles’ hold of her tightened as he waited for a sign, any sign he could pull away from her and run back to the truck. With her heart breaking in her chest, she looked again. The hunter was gone.

She forced herself to pull an inch away, notifying him, but he leaned back in to kiss her a second longer and slower - either out of habit or to receive the final goodbye he was robbed of the last time. Then they broke apart and all sound seemed to return to her ears.

With the rediscovered taste of Stiles’ lips on hers still blurring her mind, she didn’t even notice the sharp pain in her neck until her eyes shut unwillingly.

* * *

When Lydia’s eyes opened next, a black cloth covered her sight. Panicking, she tried to move her arms but the movement sent a jolt of pain - her hands were handcuffed to a hot pipe, burning her skin off. Lydia settled down, listening in on any sound, any sign notifying her of where she was and if Stiles was here too but all her ears caught were droplets of water plopping against the bottom of a bucket. A strong smell of dust wrinkled her nose; she must’ve been held in a basement of sorts.

“Stiles?” whispered Lydia, turning her head from side to side quickly. No sound - nothing but the leaking ceiling.

Lydia turned her head down, trying to brush the blindfold off her eyes with her shoulder. Eventually, she succeeded, uncovering one of her eyes and exposing herself to a dark-lit basement. She was, indeed, handcuffed to a pipe of a radiator, and her wrists had turned into a shade of red. She struggled to turn around, putting her locked hands over her neck uncomfortably - the metal rattled against the radiator. Her head was dizzy and limbs felt numb, recovering from whatever knocked her out. She squinted, taking her surroundings into view. The only lamp in the small room buzzed - the leaking water flowed from a spot on the ceiling next to it. On top of a flight of stairs was a door the width of a brick - probably just as impossible to get through either - protected by a keycard scanner. Broken furniture of all sorts covered the basement’s corners - Monroe’s hunters must be using it for storage of all the supernaturals have been destroying in their frustration. Distracted by her throbbing pain and the oddly captivating bopping of droplets, Lydia almost failed to notice a lifeless figure, handcuffed to a pipe across the room for her.

Stiles’ body showed no signs of injury - no blood soaked his clothes like it had the last time Lydia saw him in such a state. She prayed that he simply hadn’t woken up from the injection yet. She noticed that there was no longer a bulge on the side of his pants, where he’d keep his gun. As her gaze darted back to her wrists, she swore she saw his fingers twitch but she hadn’t time to check.

A distant, different flight of stairs that Lydia assumed led to the brick-wide door creaked in complaint as booted pairs of feet approached, belonging to two muffled speakers. Lydia had all of three seconds to push her blindfold back on and copy Stiles’ lifeless state.

The door buzzed open and the two hunters barged in loudly, in the middle of a conversation.

“...stupid to think they’d be unnoticed just hanging around that bar, really. I called Monroe the second I saw that truck pull up - let her know we’ve finally got our hands on the banshee and her boyfriend,” said a penetrating voice.

“Why didn’t we just get them on any other of their visits?” asked the other, drawling his words.

“They were with the Alpha. He’d fucked Monroe over enough times to risk killing him again, especially since he’s stronger with these two sleeping beauties for some reason. Monroe figured if we caused a distraction nearby, the Alpha would flee to help the others.”

Lydia heard their footsteps approach her and held her breath. One of them kicked her leg, checking for signs of life, and she struggled against the urge to twitch. They walked away then, presumably to Stiles. ‘Don’t move,’ repeated Lydia in her head like a mantra, praying that if Stiles were awake, he wasn't up to anything stupid.

“It worked. Where’s she now?”

The more informed of the two, likely higher in charge, sneered, “Trying to catch him in the Wisconsin camp.” 

“What are we waiting on her for then? Can’t we kill these two ourselves?”

This seemed to offend the responder, his voice lowering to contain his anger, “ _We_ can’t kill them - we’re supposed to set their two little werewolf friends free on them. That was the plan all along since we captured them last year. Monroe just wants to watch.”

“Why would they attack their friends?” asked the other, confusion apparent in his voice.

“ _Because_ , stupid, it’s the night of the full moon. Monroe will finally let them dance around in the moonlight.”

While the hunters let out sounds of amusement, Lydia's heartbeat drummed against her chest so viciously, she feared they'd notice she’s awake. She hadn’t a clue what the pair of men would do if they did - how much time they had until Monroe would return from Wisconsin to watch Malia and Isaac tear them limb from limb.

To her delight, the door buzzed again, this time notifying her of their departure. Lydia waited until she could only hear the leaking water to hook her blindfold at the sharp edge of the radiator, tearing it in half. With her chest heaving in panic, she glanced at Stiles, who, like her, had eliminated the temporary cause of his blindness.

Their eyes connected, each pair emitting a different hint of gravely dread. Lydia couldn’t believe that the last time she’d seen the golden irises was after he’d kissed her by the gate. Between then and waking up in the basement, hours could’ve passed.

Even though she could speak freely now, no sound came out of her mouth. What possibly could she say? This was all her fault, Stiles must be aware of that. Apologies wouldn’t change anything. Coming up with a plan for their escape was impossible - there was no way out and no one on the other side trying to get them back. Lydia had heard it loud and clear - Scott, Kira, Jackson and Ethan were in danger themselves and by the time any other team could get to them, they’d be long dead. 

It was all over.

“I should’ve listened to you when you didn’t want to come to Chicago. You’re here because of me,” said Stiles, breaking their eye contact and the deafening silence. Violently, Lydia shook her buzzing head.

There was a particularly large lump in her throat as she spoke, “We should’ve come. It’s Malia and Isaac. Of course we should’ve come.”

“ _I_ shouldn’t have set that tree on fire. It made it easier for them to capture us,” continued Lydia, her voice lowering with every word.

“It was over the moment they saw our truck pull up,” argued Stiles, pointlessly trying to pull his wrists through the handcuffs - all it did was bruise his skin more.

Neither of them let out another sound for several long moments. Lydia took comfort in the fact that the two of them had spent an unusually peaceful month, sleeping in real beds and eating hot meals. She wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she appreciated having spent one of her last moments alive kissing Stiles, even if it had only been out of duty.

“So Malia and Isaac are alive,” Stiles addressed one of the many elephants in the room. “The bad part’s that they’ve spent six months without shifting. This’ll be worse than Cora and Boyd that time they were locked up in the bank.”

“They’re way better at control now. They wouldn’t kill us,” said Lydia, although both of them knew it was false hope.

“Derek was torn apart by his own Beta and sister. Somehow I don’t think we’ll hug this one out,” Stiles laughed humorlessly. Finally, he looked up at her again, his expression serious. “You were right, Lydia. We _are_ going to die.”

Stiles leaned against the radiator, shutting his eyes in exhaust.

‘But in case we do die, I have to tell you something,’ Lydia’s own words sounded in her head. Stiles hadn’t let her say it until after, foolishly convinced of a miraculous escape. Now it was certain they wouldn’t make it out alive.

“I lied to you,” whispered Lydia, her eyes already filled with a salty liquid. At once, Stiles’ eyelids fluttered open and his gaze was on her.

“What?”

“I lied to you,” repeated Lydia, holding back from sobbing. “I lied. I told you the biggest lie. I messed up so badly.”

Stiles tried to push himself forward, his handcuffs rattling. He stared at her, wearing an expression of fright and confusion, “What are you talking about?”

“In Chicago, that last time… I couldn't see you like that, not again,” Lydia shuddered despite the heat from the radiator, remembering the Nogitsune. “You almost _died_ , Stiles. When you were shot, I thought that was it. You weren't even breathing for a minute.”

“What does that have to do with you lying?”

“If you were to die on this operation, I would die as well,” Lydia forced out, almost shifting away from Stiles’ eyes but she couldn’t - not now, not when she was telling him the truth, not when it could be the last time she saw his freckled cheeks and the golden irises she’d bored into after the first time she’d kissed him. “When you laid there, soaked in blood, my entire life flashed before my eyes. Everything we've ever been through together. And I knew that I care about you way too much to ever survive losing you. It wasn’t like when the Hunt erased you - you existed somewhere else, even if I couldn't reach you. Everywhere else you’d die and that’d be it.”

“So you…” Stiles choked out, visibly trying to piece things together in his head, which she could hear buzzing from across the room. He froze with his mouth ajar. “What?” 

Lydia didn’t answer at once, no longer in control of the tears racing down her skin, onto her sweater. Her gaze drifted off of Stiles as she tried to dry her face with the fabric. She exhaled, straightening back up. Stiles stared at her expectantly.

“I told you I no longer loved you just because I got reminded of how much I do,” she paused, pressing her lips together to restrain the sob that threatened to escape her throat at the sight of Stiles’ rigid expression. “I was _so_ selfish - I never wanted to endure that kind of pain again so I hoped that if we broke up, we could go back to the way we were in high school, before I ever…” she cut herself off to avoid hurting Stiles even more with the memory. “I hoped that I could get over you.”

“But you didn't?” asked Stiles, so quietly Lydia could barely tell it apart. He swallowed hard, blinking away tears that tugged at the corner of his glistening eyes. Lydia’s heart sank - maybe she should’ve let him die without ever knowing the truth.

“I’m sorry to have made you believe I could ever stop loving you.”

Before Stiles could say anything back, the door buzzed again and four men entered the basement. Neither Lydia nor Stiles protested as the hunters uncuffed them from the pipes - they stared at each other with sorry eyes, sorry for the time they’d lost and could never turn back, sorry for believing the other’s every word, sorry for the silent five months, sorry for tossing and turning as they failed to sleep and forcing laughter and smiles and trying to hate each other when it was impossible they ever could. Sorry for waiting until they’d run out of time.

Lydia ticked like a timebomb, getting pushed up the stairs by two hunters, whose hold of her was so tight they were almost breaking her bones. She tried to look behind her shoulder - catch one last glimpse of Stiles - but one of the men knocked her head right back.

* * *

‘At least we won’t have to run anymore,’ thought Lydia.

Their hands were restricted once more, this time by threads of rope, and they could see the place of their death perfectly. Lydia and Stiles had been forced down on their knees in the middle of a stairless hall with a balcony much like a theatre’s, except it’d been separated from the lower ground by a cage-like fence, strong enough to keep supernaturals away. Dozens and dozens of amused voices, belonging to probably every hunter within their underground headquarters, echoed from the higher ground as twice as many eyes watched Lydia and Stiles like they were especially captivating zoo animals. Besides a flickering lamp above the door they were brought in from, the only source of light in the room came from a transparent dome in the high ceiling - the shine from the full moon.

Too busy wishing for something - anything - to rid the room from the moonlight, Lydia didn’t notice the door open again. She turned her head to find a reason why all voices from the balcony ceased.

Here they were, pushed inside by pairs of terrified hands, older, hairier and deadlier than Lydia had ever seen them. Malia and Isaac lurked in the shadows, their eyes flickering from yellow and blue to normal, similarly to the lamp. Their hands were locked together with heavy chains. With all their strength, her friends tried to gain control over the powers triggered by the circle of moonlight that shone on Lydia and Stiles like a spotlight.

“Finally, we meet again,” called a familiar voice from above them, sending shivers over Lydia’s spine. Neither Lydia nor Stiles moved, their gazes fixed on Isaac and Malia, still fighting against their urge to kill them. “Usually people face someone when they’ve made their presence apparent. But you’re not people. When you mess around with animals, you become one.”

The crowd of hunters laughed at Monroe’s comment. 

“Where’s Scott?” asked Stiles. “Got your hands on _him_ yet?”

Monroe ignored him. Lydia took it as a good sign.

“I warned _you_ , Lydia, all those years ago. I told you that when humans find out the truth about their world’s intruders, they are willing to sacrifice anything to fight back. I hoped you’d join me. You’d have been a great help, a genius and a harbinger of death,” admitted Monroe, clicking her tongue. “But then you completely ignored me and started this foolish operation - anchor - that’s how you call it, isn’t it? For what? To set a bunch of murderers free? Haven’t you suffered from their hands as well?”

The lamp flickered once more, occasionally bringing the cool light to the room longer. Lydia didn’t dare to look Stiles’ way but saw his whole body twitch at the corner of her eye.

“And you, Stiles,” Monroe raised her voice. “You carried a monster inside you once. Hell, you _murdered_ the human girl that your girlfriend called her best friend. How come your guilt didn’t make you realise what a mistake mixing with animals was after you freed yourself of one?”

Finally, Lydia turned away from her growling friends, fixing on Stiles’ profile and trying to remind him that Allison’s death wasn’t his fault with a shake of her head. Stiles seemed unbothered by Monroe’s accusation, however, wearing a satisfactory expression even. Lydia’s forehead lined at his peculiar reaction until she noticed his lips move, mouthing ‘the lamp’.

Once again, her gaze fell on the light, only this time, she finally noticed the message hidden in the flickers. Four short. Pause. One short. Pause. Short, long, short. Pause. A final short one. Repeating all over, the word HERE in Morse.

“You and your crew are the only _real_ murderers in this room,” said Stiles loudly, his words startling both Lydia and the hunters, whose threats and complaints mixed with each other’s in the echoes. “It’s Kira,” Stiles mouthed again, nodding at the lamp slightly. 

“Is that why the Hale girl’s eyes are blue?” jeered Monroe when her hunters had quietened down. Malia growled louder, stepping closer to the moonlit circle in the middle of the hall. The light reflected in her handcuffs as she broke them apart with little force. Isaac rid himself of his restraints as well, seizing her waist and pulling her back as he struggled himself. “Oh, that’s right. She hates getting called Hale, instead sticking to the name of the family she killed in cold blood.”

This time, Isaac - shifted or not - could no longer hold Malia back. With her fangs gritted and eyes locked on the light shade of blue, she thrust forward, into the circle of moonlight. Even though she only wished to hurt Monroe, Lydia was the closest living creature in her sight and Malia’s thirst for blood didn’t mind who was its possessor.

Lydia’s eyes shut - she didn’t want to associate her last memory of Malia with the glimpse of her blood-craving fangs. She waited for an impact of any sort - the piercing of her skin or the rupture of her limbs - but nothing came. All Lydia heard was clattering teeth and the gasps of a crowd.

When her eyes opened back up, Stiles was standing in front of her with his arms held wide, no longer restrained by the rope - instead, it lay on the ground, torn apart.

“Malia,” he said carefully, looking fixedly into her deadly eyes. “It’s Stiles. You know me. You remember me, right? Scott and I, we found you in the Beacon Hills Preserve when you were seventeen. Remember how you punched me that time at Eichen’s for turning you back into human?”

Whatever Stiles was trying to do wasn’t helping - Malia’s nails grew into claws as she stepped forward. Stiles took a small step back, leaning down slowly to push Lydia up to her feet, his elbow hooked with hers.

“She’s a monster, Stiles,” called Monroe, though the uncertainty in her voice couldn’t be more obvious. “Regardless of what you’ll say, she’ll kill you. That’s what they do.”

The lamp no longer flickered, instead, it glowed consistently, brighter than before.

“Hold on just a little longer,” said Lydia, quietly enough for only supernatural ears to catch. Malia only growled louder, exposing her fangs.

“Kill them!” cried Monroe, banging her fists against the cage. The rest of the hunters joined in, chanting Monroe’s order in a way that Lydia couldn’t help but compare to the eerie howl of a werewolf - the hunters were as much animals as any of her friends. Stiles tightened his grasp of her arm as Malia’s clawed hand rose in the air just inches from them.

Then all turned dark and silent. No more chants, no more blinding lights - her ears rang from the deafening quiet. For a lingering moment, Lydia thought this was it - she was dead - but Stiles was still holding onto her, numbing her arm. Once she adjusted to the lack of light, she spotted a pair of glowing red eyes, floating in the shadows. Beside them was another - blue, like Malia’s.

“Run!” cried Scott, bringing all noise back to the world.

Somewhere below the rattling cage and furious protests, razor-sharp teeth bit the rope around Lydia’s wrists in half, bruising her skin. When the hunters realised their exit had been blocked from the outside, bullets flew from the holes of the cage and whistled all around Lydia, bouncing off of the hard ground. A hand took Lydia’s and led her out of the no longer card-protected door, past Ethan - in charge of Isaac - and Scott - chasing Malia. By the time Lydia and Stiles reached the end of a hallway, the hunters had run out of fire.

Lydia understood then why her senses hadn’t warned her. It was just like Stiles had said - they make it out alive together.

* * *

Hours passed until a team of agents, led by Scott’s father, stormed the underground headquarters of Monroe’s hunters, arresting one after another. By sunrise, the pack had searched the entire secret facility, freed Monroe’s prisoners - including their old ally Frank - and cracked their database, containing information about every camp, every hunter working for Monroe, although it didn’t matter much - the ‘puppies’ had reported that the news of Monroe’s imprisonment had reached the North Carolina camp and its crew had fled the scene. They assumed it wouldn’t be long until all camps emptied.

For the first time in eleven years, Lydia felt safe. All through Scott’s story of him, Kira, Ethan and Jackson receiving her message and abandoning their own mission, she couldn’t hold back her new, natural smile. Kira spared no detail explaining how they’d entered the headquarters, unnoticed, except by a couple of guards Ethan had knocked out and stripped uniforms off from - for them to change into. Just like Lydia had assumed, all hunters had gathered on the caged balcony, expecting to see the potential massacre from the first row, and the pack faced no serious issues disguised as their enemy in the empty corridors. Lydia didn’t even mind Jackson gloating about his genius plan to send Lydia and Stiles a message in Morse, therefore buying them more time to cover the dome and block the balcony’s exit. To no one’s surprise Malia and Isaac were mostly silent - spending six months isolated from the world came with an unspeakable burden.

The weight Lydia had carried on her shoulders for half of her life had lifted almost entirely. Once they freed every supernatural in the leaderless camps, they could go home - wherever that meant for each member of the operation. Lydia pondered about a dream that had felt so unreachable ever since set in stone in a tent somewhere by a lake in Missouri, what could have been two springs ago.

> _“Where do you want to go after?” Stiles asked into her ear, sending shivers over her spine._
> 
> _Unable to sleep after an especially dull day of the operation, Lydia lied over Stiles’ chest, listening in on the similarly restless grasshoppers, chirping their way into the sunrise. Occasionally, Stiles kissed her hair and Lydia pecked the hand he held in hers in gratitude. Most of the time Stiles asked her all sorts of questions, tending to forget he’d already brought some of them up on other nights like this. Lydia answered anyway, waiting until he realised himself and apologised for his forgetfulness. Lydia never minded it, however._
> 
> _“Huh?”_
> 
> _“When the operation’s over. Where’d you want us to go?” Stiles clarified._
> 
> _“Away,” said Lydia at once. “Someplace quiet and normal. Leave all this behind.”_
> 
> _Stiles raised an eyebrow, “Even our friends?”_
> 
> _“Of course not,” said Lydia, almost offended. “I’ve always imagined us living in separate houses on the same street and our children playing and growing up together, like we did.”_
> 
> _Stiles’ chest froze as he held his breath temporarily, “Children?”_
> 
> _“We’d adopt, of course. Two girls,” Lydia added casually._
> 
> _No response came from Stiles for minutes and Lydia almost thought he’d fallen asleep. She lifted her head up to look at him and his eyes were wide open in surprise, fixed on her._
> 
> _“You want to raise kids with me?”_
> 
> _Lydia sat up slowly - keeping her fingers interlocked with his over their blanket - and nodded, “After I’ve received my Fields Medal, assuming we get out of here in time for me to accomplish something.”_
> 
> _“That’s not what I mean,” said Stiles, pulling the blanket aside and following her up. They faced each other, inches away. “You think we’re buying-a-house-together, raising-kids-together material?”_
> 
> _Lydia’s heart sank in her chest, “Don’t you?”_
> 
> _“Of course I do. I just wasn’t sure you felt the same way,” said Stiles quickly, allowing her heart to beat again. He glanced at their hands before connecting their eyes, wearing a wonderstruck expression. “Lydia, I’ll_ marry _you the day this is all over, if you’re up for it.”_
> 
> _Without much hesitation - other than holding her breath like Stiles had-, Lydia hung her free arm around his neck and pulled him to her lips. He kissed her back slowly, brushing their noses together. When Lydia moved an inch away, he went back in, placing one final kiss on her mouth._
> 
> _“I definitely want to marry you,” whispered Lydia, squeezing his hand while she cupped his cheek with the other. Stiles let out a chuckle of relief, although Lydia couldn’t quite understand why - of course she would, that was their unspoken plan all along. “But only if you let us get a house with that cute little path leading up to the front door, with all the dwarf figures and lanterns you see in movies,” she added, half-joking. Stiles laughed, brushing her hand with his thumb._
> 
> _“Anything to stay with you.”_

Now that the day they lost hope waiting for had arrived, Lydia and Stiles sat across the room from each other, listing down the locations of camps and glancing the other’s way whenever their work allowed them. With half their friends and McCall’s agents around, they hadn’t addressed their last conversation, not yet.

Lydia realised she’d been staring at the same coordinates for a good few minutes when she heard a chair complain as it was pulled back.

“I’m taking a breather,” said Stiles.

She watched as he crossed the room, glancing at her expectantly as he reached the door and disappeared behind it.

“I, uh, I’ll leave for a bit as well,” uttered Lydia but no one seemed to care, their heads buried in the screens of Monroe’s computers.

She rushed after Stiles into the corridor, noticing him take the turn that led up the stairs to the symbol-marked tombstone. By the time Lydia managed to climb them up and the sunrise sky coloured her skin, Stiles had reached the gate of the cemetery, stopping when he pushed the knob down and it retreated.

Lydia walked towards him, noticing a large hole in the fence that he’d missed - one that hadn’t been there before - and taking in the peculiar view of leftover torches and plastic cups scattered across the forest, as well as the tree she’d lit up burned to the ground, leaving behind a circle of ash.

“Making me run after you now?”

Stiles’ grip on the knob loosened. He swung around, leaning against the gate as he met her eyes with a smile. Lydia’s feet glued to the ground a couple of feet from him.

“You had to taste the feeling at one point or another,” he joked back.

Lydia scoffed, crossing her arms, “Hey, it might’ve taken some time but I caught up.”

“Me too.”

She copied his moves, pressing her back against the gate the same. She couldn’t help remembering the last time she had, only with his lips on hers. Lydia glanced over at him.

“Look…”

“I think I knew,” Stiles cut her off. “A part of me, that is, but I blamed it on whatever hope remained in me.”

“I know why you did it, Lydia,” he continued, smiling sadly. “Every day for the past five years, I've wanted to run away from this whole mess with you. Abandon the operation, hell, even abandon everyone else. For eleven years we've been so lucky to have survived. But that luck couldn’t possibly last and we both knew we’d end up in a situation like last night, only except our countless, _insanely_ lucky escape.”

“I know why you did it,” Stiles repeated, narrowing his eyes. “But I wish you’d just been upfront about it. Talk it through. No lying. No breaking my heart. No becoming whatever we’ve been since.”

Lydia pressed her lips together, pouting them back out with a sigh. For hours she’d planned everything she wanted to tell him but now that they were here, all her well-worded apologises seemed to have whooshed from her brain.

“I’m sorry,” said Lydia because she had to say _some_ thing. It wasn’t enough - she didn’t know what ever would be - but perhaps Stiles could appreciate something simple for once.

He stepped away from the fence, a few feet in front of her. Lydia’s heartbeat drummed against her chest as she watched his gaze rise from her mouth to her eyes, utterly unreadable.

“I’ll forgive you,” said Stiles, the corners of his mouth lifting. “But only if there’s room for a dog in that house too.”

“Huh?” uttered Lydia, baffled to her core, her eyes wider than ever before. Her legs turned into jelly when Stiles let out the most casual of laughs.

“You know, now that we’re no longer forced to be off the grid and we can return to life as normal... That house was in your after-anchor plan, wasn’t it? The two girls and the dwarfs with the lanterns. All _I’m_ asking for is a dog,” he said, crossing his arms. Even if Lydia knew how to respond, she’d lost all her ability to speak. “ _Fine_ , if you prefer cats, we should adopt two - one for each kid. Yeah, that seems fair,” added Stiles, rubbing his chin as if he were deep in thought.

She didn’t even move when he stepped closer, licking his lips.

“I love you and you love me,” Stiles said softly, getting rid of the eerily casual act. “As long as that’s true, we can get through anything.”

Lydia’s mouth fell open slightly, the throbbing pain that had followed her since that November night in the forest leaving her almost entirely. All that was left now was making sure.

“You can sleep on it, Stiles. Take as long as you wish. You’re overwhelmed from everything that’s happened and relieved that the operation’s pretty much over now... We’ve had a long night so-”

“I don't need to.”

With one final step, Stiles eliminated the distance between them. Slowly - as in asking for a permission he didn’t need - but just as effortlessly, he picked her up. With a heaving chest, she tied her legs around his waist in a habit and he pinned her back to the wall. Their eyes reconnected and neither moved, trying to guess what the other was thinking.

“I don’t have a preference,” Lydia mumbled. “Either option is fine.”

“Perfect.”

The morning sun shone over their heads and the distant wake of the city sounded over the top of trees and they didn't care that long lost souls lay in the ground beneath them when their lips met, aching from the temporary loss of something real and something right. Her arms locked around her neck as she pulled him closer and closer until they shared the air in their lungs and breathed as one.

Lydia felt at home. She didn't need the house, the lanterned path to its door and whatever waited for her inside. All she needed was Stiles.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed the longest one shot i have posted yet! I WANT TO HEAR ALL YOUR THOUGHTS! comment, comment, comment!
> 
> i put so much energy and creativity into this and it's quickly become a written piece that i'm the proudest of.
> 
> a week ago my twitter account was suspended :( i've been using my backup but it's just not the same anymore so i might delete the app altogether and this could be the last time i'm signing off with my handle
> 
> \- dylan, @FORLYDS on twitter


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